In case you didn't know, there's an election Tuesday

The Boston Marathon bombing atrocity, as it did a lot of other things, put the campaign for the U.S. Senate on the back shelf.

There is no other way to describe it.

The primaries for the party nomination for the job will be held Tuesday, although you wouldn't know it.

The campaign among the three Republicans and two Democrats running for the Senate was simply overshadowed, like everything else, by the murderous Boston bombings, the killings and the massive investigation that followed.

It was the biggest manhunt in Massachusetts history. The killing of terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and the capture of his terrorist brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, ended one disgusting, bloody and violent chapter, but opens another. And that is the questioning, charging and prosecution of Dzhokhar, an event that will continue to dominate the news.

Meanwhile, there is a Senate fight taking place, if anybody cares.

But time is running out in the lackluster campaign to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the resignation of now-Secretary of State John F. Kerry.

It has not proven to be much of a campaign given the field of candidates, the short period of time to campaign, and the media coverage that rightly was devoted to the Boston Marathon bombing that shook the city, the state and the nation.

Still, the show must go on.

None of the five candidates running in the special election has impressed the voters very much, including voters who have paid attention.

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The two Democrats are both members of the U.S. House of Representatives. One of them is longtime liberal Rep. Edward J. Markey of Malden, who is considered to be the favorite. Markey, a member of the U.S. House for 36 years, was the first to suspend his campaign activity, including the pulling of television commercials, in the wake of the bombings. But nobody seemed to notice.

The other, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch of South Boston, may also have suspended his campaign as well, but it was hard to tell. Lynch spent most of his time trying to get face time on television, elbowing his way onto the platform with Gov. Deval Patrick and law-enforcement officials at various bomb-related press briefings.

"Who's that guy?," one patron at the bar asked, pointing his longneck at Lynch on the television screen. "I dunno," his mate answered. "Some politician, I guess."

Meanwhile, the three Republicans running were engaged in something of a bloody knife fight aboard a leaking lifeboat.

They are former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, the most conservative of the three, state Rep. Daniel B. Winslow, and political newcomer Gabriel E. Gomez, Spanish-speaking former U.S. Navy SEAL who has become a successful financial investor.

Sullivan and, to a lesser degree, Winslow, ganged up on Gabriel over a letter Gabriel sent to Democrat Gov. Deval Patrick seeking appointment as the interim U.S. Senator pending the election. In the letter, Gomez said he supported President Obama's positions on gun control and immigration. Patrick never answered the letter, probably because Gomez hand-delivered it to Mo Cowan, who was then Patrick's chief of staff and who -- surprise -- got the appointment himself.

Gabriel's "crime" for which punishment is to walk the plank, is that he supported Obama 2008, like a lot of other Republicans did.

As if the shrinking Republican Party in Massachusetts did not have enough to worry about, Sullivan even devoted a television ad to attacking Gomez for being "an Obama Republican," and went after him again in a glossy mailed pamphlet.

Sullivan could have said the same about Republican former Gov. Bill Weld. Weld also supported Obama in 2008. Weld back then called Obama a "once-in-a-lifetime candidate." Weld may have been right, but how was he to know Obama would turn out to be a train wreck?

Former Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown was not shy in praising Obama as well when he unsuccessfully sought election in 2012. Brown even ran a television ad highlighting Obama signing an insider-trading bill that Brown co-sponsored.

Presumably, Sullivan would have thrown Weld and Brown off the GOP lifeboat as well.

If nothing else, Sullivan's attack may have improved Gomez's chances. They certainly did not hurt. After all, they helped Gomez win Weld's support.

If the cultlike voters of the increasingly shrinking Republican Party in Massachusetts did not know who Gomez was before, they most likely do now.

He is the new kid on the block. But watch out -- he's been around.

Peter Lucas' political column appears Tuesday and Friday. Email him at luke1825@aol.com.

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